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CEO and president C. Robert Kidder said he and his management team at Duracell succeed because they closely align themselves with retail customers on all levels.
"If our customers put three digits in their bills, we put three digits in our bills," he said. "If they want 3-feet-by-5-feet racks, we use 3-feet-by-5-feet racks. We work to distinguish ourselves not only from Energizer and Panasonic, but from any vendor our customers interact with.
"While we can't adapt to everything they do, we pay a lot of attention and are highly responsive to those preferences and interests we can accommodate."
Before joining Duracell, Kidder spent his early management years with the Ford Motor Co. then worked six years as a consultant with McKinsey & Co. There his responsibilities included general management and marketing.
He developed key product strategies for clients and worked on the reorganization of Ford.
"As consultants, we became experts at taking a morass of market information, making sense out of it, and developing strategic action plans in a very short period of time," he said.
In the late '70s, Kidder joined Dart Industries as vice president of planning and development. He recommended the acquisition of the P.R. Mallory Co., which owned Duracell, to add more consumer business to Dart's portfolio.